Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff (Russian: Cepre

Bacu

nueeu Paxra

uuuoe;
[1]
Russian
pronunciation: [srej rxmannf]; 1 April [O.S. 20 March] 1873 28 March 1943) was
a Russian
[2]
composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest
pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian
classical music.
[3]
Early influences of Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and other Russian composers gave
way to a thoroughly personal idiom that included a pronounced lyricism, expressive breadth, structural
ingenuity, and a tonal palette of rich, distinctive orchestral colors.
[4]
The piano is featured prominently in
Rachmaninoff's compositional output. He made a point of using his own skills as a performer to explore
fully the expressive possibilities of the instrument. Even in his earliest works he revealed a sure grasp of
idiomatic piano writing and a striking gift for melody.
Contents
[hide]
1 Life
o 1.1 Childhood and youth
o 1.2 Graduation
o 1.3 Setbacks and recovery
o 1.4 Emigration and career in the West
o 1.5 Friendship with Vladimir Horowitz
o 1.6 Illness and death
2 Works
o 2.1 Compositional style
o 2.2 Fluctuating reputation
3 Pianism
o 3.1 Technique
o 3.2 Tone
o 3.3 Memory
o 3.4 Interpretations
o 3.5 Marfan syndrome
4 Recordings
o 4.1 Phonograph
o 4.2 Piano rolls
5 Media
o 5.1 As performer
o 5.2 As composer
6 Cultural references
7 See also
8 References
9 Bibliography
10 External links
o 10.1 Free scores
Life [edit]


Rachmaninoff at age 10
Childhood and youth [edit]


Rachmaninoff at the piano, in the early 1900s, before he graduated from theMoscow Conservatory
The Rachmaninoff family was a part of an "old aristocracy", where all of the attitude but none of the
money remained. The family, of Tatar descent, had been in the service of the Russian tsars since the
16th century, and had strong musical and military leanings. The composer's father, Vasily Arkadyevich
(18411916), an amateur pianist and army officer, married Lyubov Petrovna Butakova (18531929),
gained five estates as a dowry, and had three boys and three girls.
[5]
Sergei was born on 1 April 1873 at
the estate of Semyonovo, near Great Novgorod in north-western Russia.
[6]
When he was four, his mother
gave him casual piano lessons,
[7]
but it was his paternal grandfather, Arkady Alexandrovich, who brought
Anna Ornatskaya, a teacher from Saint Petersburg, to teach Sergei in 1882. Ornatskaya remained for
"two or three years", until Vasily had to auction off their home due to his financial incompetencethe five
estates had been reduced to one; he was described as "a wastrel, a compulsive gambler, a pathological
liar, and a skirt chaser"
[8][9]
and they moved to a small flat in Saint Petersburg.
[10]

Ornatskaya returned to her home, and arranged for Sergei to study at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory,
which he entered in 1883, at age ten. That year his sister Sofia died of diphtheria, and his feckless father
left the family, with their approval, for Moscow.
[5]
Sergei's maternal grandmother stepped in to help raise
the children, especially focusing on their spiritual life. She regularly took Sergei to Russian
Orthodox services, where he was first exposed to the liturgical chants and the church bells of the city,
which would later permeate many of his compositions.
[10]
Another important musical influence was his
sister Yelena's involvement in the Bolshoi Theater. She was just about to join the company, being offered
coaching and private lessons, but she fell ill and died of pernicious anemia at the age of 18. As a respite
from this tragedy, grandmother Butakova brought him to a farm retreat on the Volkhov River, where he
had a boat and developed a love for rowing.
[5]
Having been spoiled in this way by his grandmother, he
became lazy and failed his general education classes, altering his report cards, in what Nikolai Rimsky-
Korsakov would later call a period of "purely Russian self-delusion and laziness."
[11]

In 1885, back at the Conservatory, Sergei played at important events often attended by Grand Duke
Konstantin and other important people, but he failed his spring academic examinations and Ornatskaya
notified his mother that his admission might be revoked.
[5]
Lyubov consulted with her nephew (by
marriage) Alexander Siloti, already an accomplished pianist studying under Franz Liszt. After appraising
his cousin's pianism and listening skills, Siloti recommended that Sergei attend the Moscow
Conservatory to study with his own original teacher and disciplinarian, Nikolai Zverev.
[12][13]

Graduation [edit]


While living with the Satins, Rachmaninoff (standing, second from left) would vacation at Ivanovka, their summer house. He
would marry his cousin Natalia Satina (sitting, second from left).
Neighboring families would come to visit, and Rachmaninoff would find his first romance in the Skalon
family, with Vera, the youngest of three daughters. The mother would have none of that, and he was
forbidden to write to her, so he corresponded with her older sister, Natalia, and from these letters much
information about his early compositions can be extracted.
[12]
In the spring of 1891, he took his final piano
examination at the Moscow Conservatory and passed with honors. He moved to Ivanovka with Siloti, and
composed some songs and began what would become his Piano Concerto No. 1 (Op. 1). During his final
studies at the Conservatory he completed Youth Symphony, a one-movement symphonic piece, Prince
Rostislav, a symphonic poem, and The Rock (Op. 7), a fantasia for orchestra.
[5]

He gave his first independent concert on 11 February 1892, premiering his Trio lgiaque No. 1, with
violinist David Kreyn and cellist Anatoliy Brandukov. He performed the first movement of his first piano
concerto on 29 March 1892 in an over-long concert consisting of entire works of most of the composition
students at the Conservatory.
[14]

His final composition for the Conservatory was Aleko, a one-act opera based on the poem The
Gypsies by Alexander Pushkin, which Rachmaninoff completed while staying with his father in
Moscow.
[15]
It was first performed on 19 May 1892, and although he responded with a pessimistic, "the
opera is sure to fail," it was so successful, the Bolshoi Theater agreed to produce it, starring Feodor
Chaliapin.
[12]
It gained him the Great Gold Medal, awarded only twice before (to Sergei
Taneyev and Arseny Koreshchenko
[16]
), and has since had many more productions than his later
works, The Miserly Knight (Op. 24, 1904) and Francesca da Rimini (Op. 25, 1905). The Conservatory
issued him a diploma on 29 May 1892, and now, at the age of 19, he could officially style himself "Free
Artist."
[5]

Rachmaninoff continued to compose, publishing at this time his Six Songs (Op. 4) and Two Pieces (Op.
2). He spent the summer of 1892 on the estate of Ivan Konavalov, a rich landowner in the Kostroma
Oblast, and moved back with the Satins in the Arbat District.
[5]
His publisher was slow in paying, so
Rachmaninoff took an engagement at the Moscow Electrical Exhibition, where he premiered his
landmark Prelude in C-sharp minor (Op. 3, No. 2).
[17]
This small piece, part of a set of five pieces
called Morceaux de fantaisie, was received well, and is one of his most enduring pieces.
[18][19]

He spent the summer of 1893 in Lebedyn with some friends, where he composed Fantaisie-
Tableaux (Suite No. 1, Op. 5) and his Morceaux de salon(Op. 10).
[20]
At the summer's end, he moved
back to Moscow, and at Sergei Taneyev's house discussed with Tchaikovsky the possibility of his
conducting The Rock at its premiere. However, because it had to be premiered in Moscow, not Europe,
where Tchaikovsky was touring, Vasily Safonov conducted it instead, and the two met soon after
for Zverev's funeral. Rachmaninoff had a short excursion to conduct Aleko in Kiev, and on his return,
received the news about Tchaikovsky's unexpected death on 6 November 1893. Almost immediately, on
the same day, he began work on hisTrio lgiaque No. 2, just as Tchaikovsky had quickly written his Trio
in A minor after Nikolai Rubinstein's death.
Setbacks and recovery [edit]
The sudden death of Tchaikovsky in 1893 was a great blow to young Rachmaninoff; he immediately
began writing a second Trio lgiaque in his memory, revealing the depth and sincerity of his grief in the
music's overwhelming aura of gloom.
[21]
His First Symphony (Op. 13, 1896) was premired on 28 March
1897 in one of a long-running series of "Russian Symphony Concerts", but was brutally panned by critic
and nationalist composer Csar Cui who likened it to a depiction of the ten plagues of Egypt, suggesting it
would be admired by the "inmates" of a music conservatory in hell.
[22]
The deficiencies of the
performance, conducted by Alexander Glazunov, were not commented on.
[21]
Alexander Ossovsky in his
memoir about Rachmaninoff
[23]
tells, first hand, a story about this event.
[24]
In Ossovsky's opinion,
Glazunov made poor use of rehearsal time, and the concert program itself, which contained two other
premires, was also a factor. Natalia Satina, later Rachmaninoff's wife, and other witnesses suggested
that Glazunov, who was by all accounts an alcoholic, may have been drunk, although this was never
intimated by Rachmaninoff.
[25][26]



The failure of Symphony No. 1(1897) long bothered Rachmaninoff.
After the poor reception of his First Symphony, Rachmaninoff fell into a period of deep depression that
lasted three years, during which he wrote almost nothing. One stroke of good fortune came from Savva
Mamontov, a famous Russian industrialist and patron of the arts, who two years earlier had founded the
Moscow Private Russian Opera Company. He offered Rachmaninoff the post of assistant conductor for
the 18978 season and the cash-strapped composer accepted. The company included the great
basso Feodor Chaliapin who would become a lifelong friend.
[27]
During this period he became engaged to
fellow pianist Natalia Satina whom he had known since childhood and who was his first cousin. The
Russian Orthodox Church and the girl's parents both opposed their marriage and this thwarting of their
plans only deepened Rachmaninoff's depression.
In January 1900, Rachmaninoff and Chaliapin were invited to Yasnaya Polyana, the home of writer Leo
Tolstoy, whom Rachmaninoff greatly admired. That evening, Rachmaninoff played one of his
compositions, then accompanied Chaliapin in his song "Fate", one of the pieces he had written after his
First Symphony. At the end of the performance, Tolstoy took the composer aside and asked: "Is such
music needed by anyone? I must tell you how I dislike it all.Beethoven is
nonsense, Pushkin and Lermontov also". (The song "Fate" is based on the two opening measures of
Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.) As his guests were leaving, Tolstoy said: "Forgive me if I've hurt you by my
comments"; and Rachmaninoff graciously replied: "How could I be hurt on my own account, if I was not
hurt on Beethoven's?"; but the criticism of the great author stung nevertheless.
In the same year, Rachmaninoff began a course of autosuggestive therapy with psychologist Nikolai
Dahl, who was himself an excellent though amateur musician. Rachmaninoff began to recover his
confidence and eventually he was able to overcome his writer's block. In 1901 he completed his Piano
Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18 and dedicated it to Dr. Dahl. The piece was enthusiastically received at
its premiere at which Rachmaninoff was soloist and has since become one of the most popular and
frequently played concertos in the repertoire. Rachmaninoff's spirits were further bolstered when, after
three years of engagement, he was finally allowed to marry his beloved fiance, Natalia. They were wed
in a suburb of Moscow by an army priest on 29 April 1902, using the family's military background to
circumvent the church. The marriage was a happy one, producing two daughters: Irina, later Princess
Wolkonsky (1903-1969) and Tatiana Conus (1907-1961). Although Rachmaninoff had an affair with the
22-year-old singer Nina Koshetzin 1916,
[28]
his and Natalia's union lasted until the composer's death.
Natalia Rachmaninova died in 1951.
After several successful appearances as a conductor, Rachmaninoff was offered a job as conductor at
the Bolshoi Theatre in 1904, although political reasons led to his resignation in March 1906, after which
he stayed in Italy until July. He spent the following three winters in Dresden, Germany, intensively
composing, and returning to the family estate of Ivanovka every summer.
[29]

Rachmaninoff made his first tour of the United States as a pianist in 1909, an event for which he
composed the Piano Concerto No. 3 (Op. 30, 1909) as a calling card. These successful concerts made
him a popular figure in America; however, he was unhappy on the tour and declined requests for future
American concerts until after he emigrated from Russia in 1917.
[29]
This included an offer to become
permanent conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
[30]

The early death in 1915 of Alexander Scriabin, who had been his good friend and fellow student at the
Moscow Conservatory, affected Rachmaninoff so deeply that he went on a tour giving concerts entirely
devoted to Scriabin's music. When asked to play some of his own music, he would reply: "Only Scriabin
tonight".
Emigration and career in the West [edit]


Rachmaninoff in front of a giant Redwood tree, California, 1919
The 1917 Russian Revolution meant the end of Russia as the composer had known it. Rachmaninoff was
a member of the Russian bourgeoisie, and the Revolution led to the loss of his estate, his way of life, and
his livelihood. On 22 December 1917, he left Petrograd for Helsinki with his wife and two daughters on an
open sled, having only a few notebooks with sketches of his own compositions and two orchestral scores,
his unfinished opera Monna Vanna and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Golden Cockerel. He was
44 years old. He spent a year giving concerts in Scandinavia while laboring to widen his concert
repertoire. Near the end of 1918, he received three offers of lucrative American contracts. Although he
declined all three, he decided the United States might offer a solution to his financial concerns. He
departed Kristiania (Oslo) for New York on 1 November 1918. Once there, Rachmaninoff quickly chose
an agent, Charles Ellis, and accepted the gift of a piano from Steinway before playing 40 concerts in a
four-month period. At the end of the 191920 season, he also signed a contract with the Victor Talking
Machine Company. In 1921, the Rachmaninoffs bought a house in the United States, where they
consciously recreated the atmosphere of Ivanovka, entertaining Russian guests, employing Russian
servants, and observing old Russian customs.
[31]

Due to his busy concert career, Rachmaninoff's output as composer slowed tremendously. Between 1918
and his death in 1943, while living in the U.S. and Europe, he completed only six compositions. Aside
from the need to constantly tour and perform to support himself and his family, the main reason was
homesickness. It was during these years that he toured the United States as a concert pianist.
[32]
When
he left Russia, it was as if he had left behind his inspiration. His revival as a composer became possible
only after he had built himself a new home, Villa Senar on Lake Lucerne,Switzerland, where he spent
summers from 1932 to 1939. There, in the comfort of his own villa, which reminded him of his old family
estate, Rachmaninoff composed the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, one of his best known works, in
1934. He went on to compose his Symphony No. 3(Op. 44, 193536) and the Symphonic Dances (Op.
45, 1940), his last completed work. Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra premiered
the Symphonic Dances in 1941 in the Academy of Music.
In late 1940 or 1941 he was approached by the makers of the British film Dangerous Moonlight to write a
short concerto-like piece for use in the film, but he declined. The job went to Richard Addinsell and the
orchestrator Roy Douglas, who came up with the Warsaw Concerto.
[33]

Sergei Rachmaninoff was also on the Board of Directors for the Tolstoy Foundation Center in Valley
Cottage, New York.
Friendship with Vladimir Horowitz [edit]


Vladimir Horowitz as he appeared at the time Rachmaninoff met him
Just as the Rachmaninoff household in the United States strove to reclaim the lost world of pre-
revolutionary Russia, Rachmaninoff also sought out the friendship and company of some great Russian
musical luminaries. In addition to Chaliapin, he befriended pianist Vladimir Horowitz in 1928.
Arranged by Steinway artist representative Alexander Greiner, their meeting took place in the basement
of New York's Steinway Hall, on 8 January 1928, four days prior to Horowitz's debut at Carnegie
Hall playing the Tchaikovsky First Piano Concerto. Referring to his own Third Piano Concerto,
Rachmaninoff said to Greiner he heard that "Mr. Horowitz plays my Concerto very well. I would like to
accompany him."
[34]

For Horowitz, it was a dream come true to meet Rachmaninoff, to whom he referred as "the musical God
of my youth ... To think that this great man should accompany me in his own Third Concerto ... This was
the most unforgettable impression of my life! This was my real debut!" Rachmaninoff was impressed by
his younger colleague. Speaking of Horowitz's interpretation to Abram Chasins, he said "He swallowed it
whole ... he had the courage, the intensity, the daring."
[34]

The meeting between composer and interpreter marked the beginning of a friendship that continued until
Rachmaninoff's death. The two were quite supportive of each other's careers and greatly admired each
other's work. Horowitz stipulated to his manager that "If I am out of town when Rachmaninoff plays in
New York, you must telegraph me, and you must let me come back, no matter where I am or what
engagement I have." Likewise Rachmaninoff was always present at Horowitz's New York concerts and
was "always the last to leave the hall."
[35]



A Library of Congress photo of Rachmaninoff
Notably, the composer was present at Carnegie Hall for Horowitz's American debut on 12 January 1928.
Recognizing the great pianistic ability, Rachmaninoff offered his friendship and advice to Horowitz, telling
him in a letter that "You play very well, but you went through the Tchaikovsky Concerto too rapidly,
especially the cadenza."
[35]
Horowitz never agreed with the criticism of his tempo, and retained his
interpretation in future performances of the work.
[35]

Rachmaninoff and Horowitz frequently performed two-piano recitals at the composer's home in Beverly
Hills. None of these performances, which included the Second Suite and the two-piano reduction of the
Symphonic Dances, were recorded.
Rachmaninoff's faith in Horowitz's performances was such that, in 1940, with the composer's consent,
Horowitz created a fusion of the 1913 original and 1931 revised versions of his Second Piano Sonata.
[36]

For Rachmaninoff, Horowitz was a champion of both his solo works and his Third Concerto, about which
Rachmaninoff remarked publicly after the 7 August 1942 Hollywood Bowl performance that "This is the
way I always dreamed my concerto should be played, but I never expected to hear it that way on
Earth."
[35]

Illness and death [edit]


Grave at Kensico Cemetery. Note English lettering and spelling on gravestone.
Rachmaninoff fell ill during a concert tour in late 1942 and was subsequently diagnosed with
advanced melanoma. His family was informed, but he was not. On 1 February 1943 he and his wife
became American citizens.
[37]
His last recital, given on 17 February 1943 at the Alumni Gymnasium of
the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, included Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2, which contains the
famous Marche funbre (Funeral March). A statue called "Rachmaninoff: The Last Concert", designed
and sculpted by Victor Bokarev, now stands in World Fair Park in Knoxville as a permanent tribute to
Rachmaninoff. He became so ill after this recital that he had to return to his home in Los Angeles.
[38]

Rachmaninoff died of melanoma on 28 March 1943, in Beverly Hills, California, just four days before his
70th birthday. A choir sang his All Night Vigil at his funeral. He had wanted to be buried at the Villa Senar,
his estate in Switzerland, but the conditions of World War II made fulfilling this request impossible.
[39]
He
was therefore interred on 1 June in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.
[5]

Works [edit]


The cadenza of Piano Concerto No. 3 is famous for its large chords.
Main article: List of compositions by Sergei Rachmaninoff
Rachmaninoff wrote five works for piano and orchestrafour concertos plus the Rhapsody on a Theme
of Paganini. Of the concertos, the Secondand Third are the most popular.
[40]
He also wrote three
symphonies, and his other orchestral works include The Rock (Op. 7), Caprice bohmien(Op. 12), The
Isle of the Dead (Op. 29), and the Symphonic Dances (Op. 45).
Works for piano solo include 24 Preludes traversing all 24 major and minor keys: Prelude in C-sharp
minor (Op. 3, No. 2) from Morceaux de fantaisie (Op. 3); ten preludes in Op. 23; and thirteen in Op. 32.
Especially difficult are the two sets of tudes-Tableaux, Op. 33 and 39, which are very demanding study
pictures. Stylistically, Op. 33 hearkens back to the preludes, while Op. 39 shows the influences
of Scriabin and Prokofiev. There are also the Six moments musicaux (Op. 16), the Variations on a Theme
of Chopin(Op. 22), and the Variations on a Theme of Corelli (Op. 42). He wrote two piano sonatas, both
of which are large scale and virtuosic in their technical demands. Rachmaninoff also composed works for
two pianos, four hands, including two Suites (the first subtitled Fantasie-Tableaux), a version of
the Symphonic Dances (Op. 45), and an arrangement of the C-sharp minor Prelude, as well as a Russian
Rhapsody, and he arranged his First Symphony (below) for piano four-hands. Both these works were
published posthumously.
Rachmaninoff wrote two major a cappella choral worksthe Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the All-
Night Vigil (also known as the Vespers). It was the fifth movement of All-Night Vigil that Rachmaninoff
requested to have sung at his funeral. Other choral works include a choral symphony, The Bells, the
cantata Spring, the Three Russian Songs and an early Concerto for Choir (a cappella).
He completed three operas, all short: Aleko (1892), The Miserly Knight (1903), and Francesca da
Rimini (1904). He started three others, notably Monna Vanna, based on a work by Maurice Maeterlinck;
copyright in this had been extended to the composer Fvrier, and, though the restriction did not pertain to
Russia, Rachmaninoff dropped the project after completing Act I in piano vocal score in 1908; this act
was orchestrated in 1984 by Igor Buketoff and performed in the U.S. Aleko is regularly performed and has
been recorded complete at least eight times, and filmed.The Miserly Knight adheres to Pushkin's "little
tragedy". Francesca da Rimini exists somewhat in the shadow of the familiar, though entirely
different, Zandonai opera of that name.
His chamber music includes two piano trios, both which are named Trio Elgiaque (the second of which is
a memorial tribute to Tchaikovsky), and a Cello Sonata. In his chamber music, the piano tends to be
perceived by some to dominate the ensemble. He also composed many songs for voice and piano, to
texts by A. N. Tolstoy, Pushkin, Goethe, Shelley, Hugo and Chekhov, among others. Among his most
popular songs is the wordless Vocalise.
Compositional style [edit]


Rachmaninoff with a piano score
Rachmaninoff's style showed initially the influence of Tchaikovsky. Beginning in the mid-1890s, his
compositions began showing a more individual tone. His First Symphony has many original features. Its
brutal gestures and uncompromising power of expression were unprecedented in Russian music at the
time. Its flexible rhythms, sweeping lyricism and stringent economy of thematic material were all features
he kept and refined in subsequent works. After the three fallow years following the poor reception of the
symphony, Rachmaninoff's style began developing significantly. He started leaning towards
sumptuous harmonies and broadly lyrical, often passionate melodies. His orchestration became subtler
and more varied, with textures carefully contrasted, and his writing on the whole became more concise.
[41]

Especially important is Rachmaninoff's use of unusually widely spaced chords for bell-like sounds: this
occurs in many pieces, most notably in thechoral symphony The Bells, the Second Piano Concerto, the E
flat major tude-Tableaux (Op. 33, No. 7), and the B-minor Prelude (Op. 32, No. 10). "It is not enough to
say that the church bells of Novgorod, St Petersburg and Moscow influenced Rachmaninov and feature
prominently in his music. This much is self-evident. What is extraordinary is the variety of bell sounds and
breadth of structural and other functions they fulfil."
[42]
He was also fond of Russian Orthodox chants. He
uses them most perceptibly in his Vespers, but many of his melodies found their origins in these chants.
The opening melody of the First Symphony is derived from chants. (The opening melody of the Third
Piano Concerto, on the other hand, is not derived from chants; when asked, Rachmaninoff said that "it
had written itself".)
[43]
Rachmaninoff's frequently used motifs include the Dies Irae, often just the
fragments of the first phrase. Rachmaninoff had great command of counterpoint and fugal writing, thanks
to his studies with Taneyev. The above-mentioned occurrence of the Dies Irae in the Second Symphony
is but a small example of this. Very characteristic of his writing is chromaticcounterpoint. This talent was
paired with a confidence in writing in both large- and small-scale forms. The Third Piano
Concerto especially shows a structural ingenuity, while each of the preludes grows from a tiny melodic or
rhythmic fragment into a taut, powerfully evocative miniature, crystallizing a particular mood or sentiment
while employing a complexity of texture, rhythmic flexibility and a pungent chromatic harmony.
[44]



A monument to Rachmaninoff in Moscow
His compositional style had already begun changing before the October Revolution deprived him of his
homeland. The harmonic writing in The Bells (composed in 1913 but not published until 1920
[45][46]
)
became as advanced as in any of the works Rachmaninoff would write in Russia, partly because the
melodic material has a harmonic aspect which arises from its chromatic ornamentation.
[47]
Further
changes are apparent in the revised First Piano Concerto, which he finished just before leaving Russia,
as well as in the Op. 38 songs and Op. 39 tudes-Tableaux. In both these sets Rachmaninoff was less
concerned with pure melody than with coloring. His near-Impressionist style perfectly matched the texts
by symbolist poets.
[48]
The Op. 39 tudes-Tableaux are among the most demanding pieces he wrote for
any medium, both technically and in the sense that the player must see beyond any technical challenges
to a considerable array of emotions, then unify all these aspects
[49]

The composer's friend, Vladimir Wilshaw, noticed this compositional change continuing in the early
1930s, with a difference between the sometimes very extroverted Op. 39 tudes-Tableaux (the composer
had broken a string on the piano at one performance) and the Variations on a Theme of Corelli (Op. 42,
1931). The variations show an even greater textural clarity than in the Op. 38 songs, combined with a
more abrasive use of chromatic harmony and a new rhythmic incisiveness. This would be characteristic of
all his later works the Piano Concerto No. 4 (Op. 40, 1926) is composed in a more emotionally
introverted style, with a greater clarity of texture. Nevertheless, some of his most beautiful (nostalgic and
melancholy) melodies occur in the Third Symphony, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and Symphonic
Dances.
[48]

Fluctuating reputation [edit]


Rachmaninoff monument, Novgorod
His reputation as a composer generated a variety of opinions before his music gained steady recognition
across the world. The 1954 edition of theGrove Dictionary of Music and Musicians notoriously dismissed
Rachmaninoff's music as "monotonous in texture ... consist[ing] mainly of artificial and gushing tunes" and
predicted that his popular success was "not likely to last".
[50]
To this, Harold C. Schonberg, in his Lives of
the Great Composers, responded, "It is one of the most outrageously snobbish and even stupid
statements ever to be found in a work that is supposed to be an objective reference."
[50]

The Conservatoire Rachmaninoff in Paris, as well as streets in Veliky Novgorod (which is close to his
birthplace) and Tambov, are named after the composer. In 1986, Moscow Conservatory dedicated a
concert hall on its premises to Rachmaninoff, designating the 252-seat auditorium Rachmaninoff Hall. A
monument to Rachmaninoff was unveiled in Veliky Novgorod, near his birthplace, as recently as 14 June
2009.
Pianism [edit]

This article is written like a personal reflection or opinion essay rather than
an encyclopedic description of the subject. Please help improve it by rewriting
it in an encyclopedic style. (June 2010)
Technique [edit]


Rachmaninoff in 1901. Note the hands.
As a pianist, Rachmaninoff ranked among the finest pianists of his time, along with Leopold
Godowsky, Ignaz Friedman, Moriz Rosenthal, Josef Lhevinne, andJosef Hofmann and he was famed for
possessing a clean and virtuosic piano technique. His playing was marked by precision, rhythmic drive,
notable use of staccato and the ability to maintain clarity when playing works with complex textures.
Rachmaninoff applied these qualities in music by Chopin, including the B flat minor Piano Sonata.
Rachmaninoff's repertoire, excepting his own works, consisted mainly of standard 19th Century virtuoso
works plus music by Bach, Beethoven, Borodin, Debussy, Grieg, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert,
Schumann and Tchaikovsky.
[51]

Rachmaninoff possessed extremely large hands, with which he could easily maneuver through the most
complex chordal configurations. His left hand technique was unusually powerful. His playing was marked
by definitionwhere other pianists' playing became blurry-sounding from overuse of the pedal or
deficiencies in finger technique, Rachmaninoff's textures were always crystal clear. Only Josef Hofmann
and Josef Lhevinne shared this kind of clarity with him.
[52]
All three men had Anton Rubinstein as a model
for this kind of playingHofmann as a student of Rubinstein's
[53]
, Rachmaninoff from hearing his famous
series of historical recitals in Moscow while studying with Zverev
[54]
, and Lhevinne from hearing and
playing with him.
The two pieces Rachmaninoff singled out for praise from Rubinstein's concerts became cornerstones for
his own recital programs. The compositions wereBeethoven's Appassionata and Chopin's Funeral
March Sonata. He may have based his interpretation of the Chopin sonata on Rubinstein's. Rachmaninoff
biographer Barrie Martyn points out similarities between written accounts of Rubinstein's interpretation
and Rachmaninoff's audio recording of the work.
[55]

As part of his daily warm-up exercises, Rachmaninoff would play the technically difficult tude in A flat,
Op. 1, No. 2, attributed to Paul de Schlzer.
[56]

Tone [edit]
From those barely moving fingers came an unforced, bronzelike sonority and an accuracy bordering on
infallibility. Correct notes seemed to be built into his constitution, and a wrong note at a Rachmaninoff
recital was an exceedingly rare event.
[57]
Arthur Rubinstein wrote:
He had the secret of the golden, living tone which comes from the heart ... I was always under the spell of
his glorious and inimitable tone which could make me forget my uneasiness about his too rapidly fleeting
fingers and his exaggerated rubatos. There was always the irresistible sensuous charm, not
unlike Kreisler's.
[58]

Coupled to this tone was a vocal quality not unlike that attributed to Chopin's playing. With
Rachmaninoff's extensive operatic experience, he was a great admirer of fine singing. As his records
demonstrate, he possessed a tremendous ability to make a musical line sing, no matter how long the
notes or how complex the supporting texture, with most of his interpretations taking on a narrative quality.
With the stories he told at the keyboard came multiple voicesa polyphonic dialogue, not the least in
terms of dynamics. His 1940 recording of his transcription of the song "Daisies" captures this quality
extremely well. On the recording, separate musical strands enter as if from various human voices in
eloquent conversation. This ability came from an exceptional independence of fingers and hands.
[59]

Memory [edit]
Rachmaninoff also possessed an uncanny memoryone that would help put him in good stead when he
had to learn the standard piano repertoire as a 45-year-old exile. He could hear a piece of music, even a
symphony, then play it back the next day, the next year, or a decade after that. Siloti would give him a
long and demanding piece to learn, such as Brahms' Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. Two
days later Rachmaninoff would play it "with complete artistic finish." Alexander Goldenweiser said,
"Whatever composition was ever mentionedpiano, orchestral, operatic, or otherby a Classical or
contemporary composer, if Rachmaninoff had at any time heard it, and most of all if he liked it, he played
it as though it were a work he had studied thoroughly."
[60]

Interpretations [edit]


Rachmaninoff at the piano
Regardless of the music, Rachmaninoff always planned his performances carefully. He based his
interpretations on the theory that each piece of music has a "culminating point." Regardless of where that
point was or at which dynamic within that piece, the performer had to know how to approach it with
absolute calculation and precision; otherwise, the whole construction of the piece could crumble and the
piece could become disjointed. This was a practice he learned from Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, a
staunch friend.
[51]
Paradoxically, Rachmaninoff often sounded like he was improvising, though he actually
was not. While his interpretations were mosaics of tiny details, when those mosaics came together in
performance, they might, according to the tempo of the piece being played, fly past at great speed, giving
the impression of instant thought.
[61]


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1919 Rachmaninoff recording of Liszt's 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody for Edison Records.
One advantage Rachmaninoff had in this building process over most of his contemporaries was in
approaching the pieces he played from the perspective of a composer rather than that of an interpreter.
He believed "interpretation demands something of the creative instinct. If you are a composer, you have
an affinity with other composers. You can make contact with their imaginations, knowing something of
their problems and their ideals. You can give their works color. That is the most important thing for me in
my interpretations, color. So you make music live. Without color it is dead."
[62]
Nevertheless,
Rachmaninoff also possessed a far better sense of structure than many of his contemporaries, such as
Hofmann, or the majority of pianists from the previous generation, judging from their respective
recordings.
[59]

A recording which showcases Rachmaninoff's approach is the Liszt Second Polonaise, recorded in
1925. Percy Grainger, who had been influenced by the composer and Liszt specialistFerruccio Busoni,
had himself recorded the same piece a few years earlier. Rachmaninoff's performance is far more taut
and concentrated than Grainger's. The Russian's drive and monumental conception bear a considerable
difference to the Australian's more delicate perceptions. Grainger's textures are elaborate. Rachmaninoff
shows the filigree as essential to the work's structure, not simply decorative.
[63]

Marfan syndrome [edit]
Along with his musical gifts, Rachmaninoff possessed physical gifts that may have placed him in good
stead as a pianist. These gifts included exceptional height and extremely large hands with a gigantic
finger stretch (he could play the chord C Eb G C G with his left hand). This and Rachmaninoff's slender
frame, long limbs, narrow head, prominent ears, and thin nose suggest that he may have had Marfan
syndrome, a hereditary disorder of the connective tissue. This syndrome would have accounted for
several minor ailments he suffered all his life. These included back pain, arthritis, eye strain and bruising
of the fingertips.
[64]

Recordings [edit]


Rachmaninoff (1921 Victoradvertisement)
Phonograph [edit]
Many of Rachmaninoff's recordings are acknowledged classics. Rachmaninoff recorded first for Edison
Records on their "Diamond Disc" records, since they claimed the best audio fidelity in recording the piano
at the time. Thomas Edison, who was quite deaf,
[65]
did not care for Rachmaninoff's playing and referred
to him as a "pounder" at their initial meeting.
[66]
However, the staff at Edison's New York recording studio
(led by company pianist Robert Gayler) asked Edison to reconsider his dismissive position, resulting in a
limited contract for ten released sides. The Edison company took some care with its piano recordings but
used an unusual make, the Lauter, made in Newark; Rachmaninoff recorded on a Lauter concert grand,
one of the few the company made. Rachmaninoff believed his own performances to be variable in quality
and requested that he be allowed to approve any recordings for commercial release. Edison agreed but
still issued multiple takes, a common practice in the gramophone record industry at the time but
especially prevalent at Edison, where strict company policy demanded three "perfect" takes of each
selection in case of damage in manufacturing or wear to the metal masters; in practice, this meant to the
staff that takes passed for issue were interchangeable, but it was also very wearing on artists who often
had to record items repeatedly to produce three acceptable takes. Edison's staff and Rachmaninoff were
pleased with the released discs and wanted to record more, but Thomas Edison refused to engage the
pianist for further work, saying the ten sides were sufficient for label prestige purposes. Rachmaninoff
then signed a contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1920 and with its successor, RCA
Victor. The company was pleased to comply with Rachmaninoff's restrictions, and proudly advertised him
as one of their great recording artists. His recordings for Victor continued until 1942, when the American
Federation of Musicians imposed a recording ban in the U.S.
Particularly renowned are his renditions of Schumann's Carnaval and Chopin's Funeral March Sonata,
along with many shorter pieces. He recorded all four of his piano concertos with thePhiladelphia
Orchestra, including two versions of the second concerto with Leopold Stokowski conducting (an
acoustical recording in 1924 and a complete electrical recording in 1929), and a world premiere recording
of the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, soon after the first performance (1934) with the Philadelphians
under Stokowski. The first, third, and fourth concertos were recorded with Eugene Ormandy in 1939-41.
Rachmaninoff also made three recordings conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in his own Third
Symphony, his symphonic poem Isle of the Dead, and his orchestration of Vocalise. All of these
recordings were released in a 10-CD set "Sergei Rachmaninoff The Complete Recordings" in RCA Victor
Gold Seal 09026-61265-2.
In an article for Gramophone, April 1931, Rachmaninoff defended an earlier stated view on the musical
value of radio, about which he was sceptical: "the modern gramophone and modern methods of recording
are musically superior to wireless transmission in every way".
[67]

Piano rolls [edit]


A Russian Federationcommemorative Rachmaninoff coin
Rachmaninoff was also involved in various ways with music on piano rolls. Several manufacturers, and in
particular the Aeolian Company, had published his compositions on perforated music rolls from about
1900 onwards.
[68]
His sister-in-law, Sofia Satina, remembered him at the family estate at Ivanovka,
pedalling gleefully through a set of rolls of his Second Piano Concerto, apparently acquired from a
German source,
[69]
most probably the Aeolian Company's Berlin subsidiary, the Choralion Company.
Aeolian in London created a set of three rolls of this concerto in 1909, which remained in the catalogues
of its various successors until the late 1970s.
[70]

From 1919 he made 35 piano rolls (12 of which were his own compositions),
[71]
for the American Piano
Company (Ampico)'s reproducing piano. According to the Ampico publicity department, he initially
disbelieved that a roll of punched paper could provide an accurate record, so he was invited to listen to a
proof copy of his first recording. After the performance, he was quoted as saying "Gentlemen I, Sergei
Rachmaninoff, have just heard myself play!" For demonstration purposes, he recorded the solo part of his
Second Piano Concerto for Ampico, though only the second movement was used publicly and has
survived. He continued to record until around 1929, though his last roll, the Chopin Scherzo in B-flat
minor, was not published until October 1933.
[72]